Executive Sentenced for Destroying Bribery and Corruption Evidence

Richard
Kingston, formerly of the AIM listed construction group, Sweett Group Plc, was
found guilty by a jury on 21 December 2016 of two statutory offences for the
destruction of evidence relating to a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) bribery and
corruption investigation. Richard Kingston, who was the managing director
of Middle East operations for the group, was sentenced to 12 months
imprisonment on each count, to run concurrently.

He
was convicted of concealing, destroying or otherwise disposing of two mobile
telephones, knowing or suspecting that the data stored on those phones would be
relevant to the SFO’s inquiries.

He
was first arrested in December 2014 as part of an SFO investigation into
suspected bribery offences into the group’s operations in the Middle East. In
February 2016, the group was ordered to pay £2.25m after pleading guilty to
failing to prevent acts of bribery.

Comment

As well as highlighting the
tough approach of the SFO to tackling bribery and corruption; it serves as a
reminder to commercial organisations to assess whether they have taken
appropriate steps to prevent bribery within their organisation. The Bribery Act
2010 includes a controversial offence of failure of a commercial organisation
to prevent bribery. This offence means that where an employee or agent is
involved in committing a bribery offence, the company will be held criminally
responsible unless it can show that it took reasonable steps to ensure adequate
procedures were in place to prevent bribery from occurring.

In the case against the Sweett
Group, there was no evidence that senior management at group level were aware
of the offences prior to it being identified during its own internal
investigations but the simple failure to have adequate procedures in place
resulted in a criminal conviction.

We regularly advise clients on
their statutory obligations on bribery and corruption and work with them to
design and implement compliance procedures and training programmes on a case by
case basis.